‘So long until tomorrow’, your sign off yesterday, used to be Lowell Thomas’s extro at the end of his moderately Republican commentary at 6:45 pm Eastern on WJZ, I think. Sponsor: Blue Sunoco. He lived on Quaker Hill, nr. Pawling, NY, I think before Norman Vincent Peale’s time. Have mentioned here before that Thomas and FDR had amateur baseball teams that played there and at Hyde Park. Saw FDR at QH once; he had ridden there in a LaSalle.

I will have a total of 16 people in my little house, grandkids and kids. I have made pumpkin pie and will make fudge shortly. I will roast the turkey slowly starting late tonight. Wife will make the stuffing and mashed potatoes. I will do the sweet potatoes. Then comes 30 minutes of eating after 4 days of prep. There will be a full day of loud then I will spend Friday trying to recover. Chronic pain is just no fun.

When I first encountered pizza in the Village [Greenwich V., to be specific], it had not yet attained its glorious American state. This was maybe ’46-’48, and pizza was essentially flat bread covered w/ tomato sauce, brought upstairs through the metal doors in the sidewalk outside a bakery on Carmine St., SW of Our Lady of Pompeii RC church. Have been on 6th Ave. hundreds of times, and eaten pizza untold times, but never on 6th, if I remember.

First pizzeria in Bemidji was Dave’s Pizza, still in same spot on 15th and Irvine Ave. Was run by Dave and brother Keith, who eventually opened rival Keith’s Pizza. We now have several chain pizzerias, none of them as good. Only one, IMO, that comes close is Papa Murphey’s, which you bake at home. And, of course, the two supermarkets carry a slew of frozen pizzas. Dave’s doesn’t even advertise, but is full F and S evenings. Is now owned by Pete Fenson, of the Fenson rink that won Curling Bronze / Winter Olympics a few times back, and his wife Roxanne. Roxy was a biology undergrad asst. at BSU, a real day-brightener. I think one of their sons won a place on the current Amer. curling rink.

Dear Old Bear, Your menu sounds good. Wish I could have some. A glorious Thanksgiving to you and to all the Villagers.

Our first pizza was some time in the mid 1940′s. A family friend was a Home Ec teacher. She went to NYC for a summer program at Columbia, I think, and stayed for some weeks. She learned to make Pizza from an Italian neighbor, and showed my mother how when she got back to NH. We used to have friends over for “pizza parties”. Regular bread dough was fitted into pie pans, spread with tomato sauce, then one would have cheese on it, one onion, one sardine; I forget the fourth. Mother shook some black pepper over them; none of us had ever heard of oregano, and the stores didn’t carry it. I bet we had garlic, though. My great grandmother Emma took in boarders and learned about garlic from her Greek and Italian boarders, and we always used it. The pizzas were simple and delicious.

First pizza would probably have been plain cheese at the Saratoga restaurant on SE corner of Eliot Avenue and Fresh Pond Road in Queens Co., NY. It is no longer there. I never knew of any varieties aside from plain cheese until I got to college in fall ’57! My first was sometime earlier in the ’50s, likely about 1955. The church softball team sometimes stopped in after a game, and I was in that group.
At college, I met pepperoni and have enjoyed same ever since. Y’all can have the anchovies, onions, green peppers, kohlrabi, and so forth; just let me at the pepperoni and mushrooms and, maybe, bacon (if it is chunks rather than in ultra thin strips)!

Pizza memories. I was deep South and never heard of pizza or hoagies. Got sent to Pennsylvania for boarding school in 1959. Learned about pizza and lots of other sinful things I came to savor.

Since we were not allowed off campus our pizza was delivered by taxi from a local bar. I remember it as the best I have ever eaten. It was never served for meals in the dining room so I never learned the socially correct way to properly eat it.

We folded up slices to keep toppings and cheeses from sliding off as you ate.

First pizza I can recall was from Pasquale’s, an Alabama chain. They were there ahead of Pizza Hut.

Just to hit another food topic, best nachos I ever had were also the first ones. At a little place just off Corry Field in Pensacola, FL when I was in the Navy A School there. Just tortilla chips topped with good cheese and jalapenos and baked till the cheese started to melt.

First pizza chain I frequented was Shakey’s in Memphis. I later found one in Kobe, Japan, but it didn’t last very long once we Americans found it had an all-you-can-eat buffet. Today the closest Shakey’s is an 8-hour drive away in Victorville CA.

House is almost clean and table is set. Bob is supposed to be picking up a highchair from one of his buddies – having a toddler in the house will be a new adventure for us! Apple pie (using apples we picked from our friend’s tree in NC) is done, as are the sweet potatoes. Veggies are chopped for relish tray and to add to rice concoction. Niece is bringing stuffing muffins. Sister-in-law is doing broccoli slaw and carrots; her gentleman friend is making deviled eggs for pre-dinner snacking.

Looks like the temperatures will be cooperating with having folks on the porch (i.e. out of the way) before dinner. We may have rain, which could foil our plan to let the little one run off energy in the back yard.

I’m thankful to have found such a lovely Village to hang out in. Have a wonderful day everyone!

TruckerRon, closest Shakey’s to my hometown was in Birmingham. There was one in Yokosuka which had the buffet too. But you had to be careful what you picked out as one of the toppings was cuttlefish, i e squid. I thought it was mushrooms when I took it, but texture and flavor was not mushroom!

My first remembered pizza was Ledo’s Pizza in Adelphi, MD. They recently moved the original closer to campus in College Park. It gave me a fondness for thin crust, showcasing the flavor of sauce and toppings without filling up on a more leavened crust. Always made to fit a 13×9 sheet instead of round.

Pizza at home was by Chef Boyardee, but an Italian family neighbor still had a Mama who loved to hear compliments. Learned a lot there, and stopped buying that stuff. Home cooked with properly aged dough instead of fresh risen may still beat some restaurants for flavor. But the atmosphere of a good pizzeria adds to the experience. Or that may just be nostalgia that cannot be recreated.

We had a metal outbuilding where we lived for 46 yr. Fortunately, that never happened. Had to deal w/ white-faced hornets and yellowjackets a few times, never stung dangerously, but they are not favorite insects. Peace,

Rick I was raised in one of those old farmhouses by my grandparents and we had wood fireplaces being used until I was old enough to remember them. They switched to gas space heaters which often froze up in cold weather.

My first Pizza was a frozen one heated in the oven. Probably went to a Pizza Hut as they were just opening when I was in HS. Had some decent pizza in college and my Italian Father-in-law did a great homemade pizza.

When my FIL’s mother died, we went to East Rutherford NJ and had the best pizza ever at the New Park Tavern. Detroit has a think square pizza that is pretty good, but I prefer the thin NY style slice.

My most memorable pizza was when I went home for Christmas for my Dad a few month’s after my Mom’s fatal traffic accident. We went to church and tried to figure out what to have for dinner. Since we already had a nice Christmas Day dinner planned, we decided to pick up a pizza. Since often one or both parents had to work on the holidays, we never had any rigid traditions so I think my Mom approved of our dinner decision.

My step grandparents lived in a log cabin and heated and cooked with wood u til the 1950s when my stepdad and his brother bought a small post war house in town for them and moved them to the city about a hundred miles from the “hills.”

They were living in town by the time I knew them in 1950 but Ma.maw’s cooking methods were based on those ways she learned in the hills. She never mastered baking but tried.

Many of my older relatives still lived In log cabins or log houses into my life as I remember visiting them.

Rick, your story of the well water reminds me of the artesian wells where my grandparents would get water when in Moundville, AL. It was wonderful stuff when you got used to the iron taste. One was in a public park and the other fed a horse trough on one of the back roads.

My second round of chemo brought on some naseau and loss of appetite yesterday and today, along with tiredness. Ghost cooked stuffing and asparagus casserole to go with our turkey. It was quiet and peaceful here.

Tomorrow is day two with new sides for the turkey. We will have four days, not one to feast through the weekend. I like that idea.

Dickens filled up on turkey too. He loves it and “speaks” asking for his share. As Ghost says, it’s a good thing he is so cute.

Depends on your well, and time. Well at our cabin in the Chippewa NF had clay in the water, from 80′ down, maybe 40′ below lake level. Long since razed Curtis Hotel was famous, into the late ’60s or more, for artesian well water, drawn from an aquifer from ND. In another decade or so, chemical fertilizer from ND agriculture arrived. As Garret Hardin said, ‘You cannot do just one thing.’ Peace,